Facebook purchases Karma – social gift service

It looks like Facebook has been getting some good Karma as of late because they've been rocking out. first with the purchase of Instagram, then they snatched up rival service Lightbox to get into the photography aspects even more. Now they've also acquired the social gifting service Karma -- and you can't forget about the Facebook IPO and stocks going crazy.

While Facebook's stock is starting to dive hopefully good things will be headed their way. This weekend the founders of Karma announced the acquisition on their company blog, stating that Karma will continue as it always has and from here forward they'll be joining the team at Facebook and will be bringing their passion to the social site.

So what does all this mean? Clearly Facebook is doing plenty with all that money they've recently received -- Not to mention Mark secretly got married this weekend. With Instagram, Lightbox, and now Karma all joining forces at Facebook hopefully they'll really get cracking on the Facebook for Android application. It still needs some serious help. I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook snatches up even more companies in the coming months so stay tuned.

Time to play with the monopoly money I guess. Karma sounds good on
paper, but in reality, it is anything but useful. First, you have to buy an
overpriced item from their catalogue. A $50 quart of ice cream or a $25
homemade candy bar are just two examples.
Not novel at all. Second, if I’m going to spend that much on a gift,
then they better be a close friend/family. No way I can afford to do ‘little’
events. Third, I have to pay shipping fees so the cost adds up pretty quick.
And fourth, I can’t make this a group gift….have others chip in. The only social aspect is that the gifting is
done through Facebook. Wow.

I started EventSmart (www.myeventsmart.com) which is really
what social gifting should be. It’s free, the recipient can buy anything they
want, and I can invite others to chip in. You can also contribute as little as
$5 for anything. For example, recently a close friend’s son had several surgeries
on a broken leg. I started a gift, chipped in some money and then invited some
mutual friends who contributed as well. EventSmart collected the contributions
and then let my friend’s son transfer the funds onto a gift card. He ended up
buying some video games through Amazon. No fees. No overpriced items from a
limited catalogue. Several people all contributed. Now that’s social gifting!

Karma is good marketing with no substance. Their mobile app is
nice, but their offering is terrible. I’d never use their restrictive service
for overpriced stuff. Hope Facebook didn’t pay that much, but when it’s
monopoly money, maybe it doesn’t matter.

http://www.julesmariano.com/ Jules Mariano

I really think that Facebook has this all figured out at the outset because they know exactly each of Facebook user’s social graph. The fact that they bought Karma they probably will with other similar social gifting apps like Jifiti. I think it makes sense because Facebook would want to leverage gifting as a way to maximize business profit, revenue. Imagine how much money would come in if this is used in the right way because gifting happens all year round.